State of Mind

Because we never learn, and because we seem to like buying houses, me and my spouse are currently in need of yet another bed. And this time, given the fact that the master bedroom in this cute house we bought near Saratoga Springs, N.Y. is actually a real master bedroom -- with an ensuite bathroom, Juliet balcony, skylight and room dimensions fitting real adults who are old and have worked (relatively) hard and deserve (maybe) a nice bedroom -- we can get a king bed.

We've never had a king-size bed before. Why? Because of the 8 or 9 houses we have owned (not all at once) three of them were in Seattle, where the housing stock consists of bungalows or small ranches on a plethora of in-city building lots of 5,000 square feet. This meant that, in at least two instances, our bedrooms required hugging the walls to get around the queen-size bed, which in one house meant when were laying in bed, we could look out over our lovely cement retaining wall. Tight quarters, but worth it!

Now, however, because we will be keeping two houses until one of us figures out how to RETIRE, we need to find bedroom furniture to outfit this lovely new room in the country where we will either love the quiet or come running down the hillside to the city and cry out on Broadway: What were we thinking? Until that happens, we need a bed. A nice, big but reasonably priced king-size bed.

So, I have taken up the cause and gone shopping online to see if I can find anything that 1) fits our aesthetic ideal and 2) fits our very modest budget. What this means is that we cannot, in good conscience, outfit this house with the same exact king-size bed that the current owners have so tantalizingly owned.

The Vermont Furniture Design cherry collection that they collected over their 30 years of inhabiting the home is, just, too much money given all the other expenses. Still, that sleigh bed just cries out to us, with its paneled headboard and footboard and wonderfully lovely mashup of Shaker/craftsman/mid-century design ... but I must resist! This sleigh bed, king size, runs upwards of $2,600.

This cold, hard reality has forced me to take up a relentless hunt through pages and pages of online shopping and home decor sites. I keep hoping I will strike gold; that somewhere in some forgotten collection on Houzz or Overstock.com, a lone leftover king-size cherry sleigh bed at a fraction of the cost will be lurking, waiting for some intrepid shopper such as myself to find it and proclaim: "OMG! I just found the cherry sleigh bed and it is a close-out on sale for $450!"

It's been weeks now. And ... so far ... nothing.

Well, scratch that. Not "nothing."

In what seems to be some kind of cruel and relentlessly unending joke, the Interwebs keep serving up NOTHING remotely like that lovely cherry sleigh bed for $450 but, instead, what I have been "treated" to is a rolling, brutal, tyrannical stream of bed frames and platforms that seem to be from the imagination of the Freddy Kruger film producers, or the warped sensibility of mass-market furniture manufacturers who went so far down the design rabbit hole that they've created beds for Martians or King Henry the 8ths wannabes.

Fresh horror after fresh horror, I realize that I have, by now, given up the Hunt For The Perfect & Aesthetically Stupendous Hand-Crafted, All-Natural Cherry Sleigh Bed and, instead, become completely fixated on just how so many god-forsaken beds are out there waiting to be bought!

For instance, this navy-blue tufted contraption, in which nowhere in the product description did it mention that it was straight out of a funeral home catalogue and well-suited for anyone seeking to get a sense of what it's like to sleep in a casket.

Or this boxy behemoth decked out in gold. This must be for couples who emulate the French monarchy. It's called Lavish Gold by Meridian, whose product description says this bed "is an impeccable example of truly memorable, opulent traditional design.'' Features are:

Rich Gold Finish

Elegant Traditional Carved Bedroom

Marble Posts On Headboard

Marble Top Footboard

Crystal Tufting on Headboard And Footboard

Because who doesn't need a marble footboard?

This mahogany masterpiece is a real show stopper. Or, maybe it's a door stopper. Or maybe it's alternative use is to sail across the Atlantic, back to Spain in the time of Columbus and the Moors. You can almost hear it creak with every stormy swell. Ahoy!

Or this magnificent red leather platform number. It looks like taffy and all I can think of are my knees screaming at me every time I try to elevate from this low-slung sleep aid. All I can see is Ronaldo or some other high-value European soccer star coming home to his high-priced Madrid condo to find his home decorator has decided this leather bunk is the best way to express the image of a sporty, sleek, millionaire playboy.

Now this thing, above, is called Vegas deco. Its wrought iron and appears to have two stags parading at the foot of the bed. Their heads are cocked to the side, averting each other's eyes. It is actually so mysterious a design that I think I would spend more time trying to figure out what those stags are doing, and why, than I would sleeping in that bed.

Then there's this one, above. A poster bed with decorative elements straight out of a spelunker's handbook. I call this "The Stalagmite" for the way the poster design appear to be a grotesque outcrop from the floor of a cave.

I could go on. And maybe I will add more beauties to this blog post. I have saved numerous other bad beds because after failing to find my natural cherry sleigh bed needle in a haystack, I became fascinated by the plethora of rustic charmers out there on the discount sites.

In one instance when I did a search for "natural wood king beds,'' this thing popped up. I think it's from The Beverly Hillbilly Collection, but I could be wrong.​

LAURA VECSEY

I used to write politics, news and sports for newspapers in cities like Albany NY, Seattle, Baltimore and Harrisburg PA. Now I take a lot of Instagram photos, check Facebook, swim, read about T$$$p and cook dinner for people I really like. New York native, living in Port Washington and Greenfield Center (that's near Saratoga Springs FYI).